sometimes when i come home ayi is busy cleaning. she usually shouts hello to me from over the vacuum cleaner, the vacuum cleaner that she was very hesitant to use at first (her hands and wet cloths work just fine she said) until cal and I bought a shag rug from IKEA that shed horribly every time to breathed near it. sorry, ayi!
my friend gary who introduced ayi to us, gives ayi clothes for her son whenever he can. he's a dj here, so there are lots of young guys who i'm sure would love to get any of gary's handouts. so when I have extra clothes or food i try to offer it to her, eventhough she thinks the things that we eat are wack and so she’d flatly refuse anything (would you eat my favs, natto, kimchi or brie?). but she sometimes comments loudly on my clothes, and once even came into the study to show me that we have the same shoe size. so when i had a new suit shirt made for me from the tv station and a silk blouse I had high hopes for at DJD but both made me look like i was wearing pajamas they were so big, i asked ayi if she could use them.
trying them on immediately, it was amazing. she looked really elegant, quite beautiful, in both. She turned around for me to admire her from all angles. It was obvious she didn't want to take it off and change back into her work clothes. She lingered in front of the mirror a long time so i went to check my e-mail. after 10 minutes she came over, still wearing the silk shirt. "next time, if i get asked out for a fancy evening out, this is exactly what i'll wear. thank you! isn't it just too pretty to wear anything over it?" i paused, and then almost cried. i didn't want to hear that something that small could make her that happy. "yup. you look great."
she knows how I like to make clothes, so she mentioned to me about her friend whose husband is a tailor in the neighborhood. I opted to leave the umbrella and sunblock at home since she insisted they were so close. 2 HOURS by foot later, (I had almost completely lost hope when we passed suzhou river, me being slow-cooked and sneakers melting) she finally found the old crumbling shikumen her friend lived at. a few people playing cards had some glasses and plastic combs for 2 yuan each for sale. turns out she didn’t know "exactly" where her friend lived, so that took another 30 minutes as I continued to develop a constellation of angry red freckles. 'she’s doing you a FAVOR', I kept telling myself.
Inside the concrete walls, it was obvious they had cleaned up for our arrival. The bed was carefully turned down, chairs set around a modest Chinese round table, and cups of tea poured. Her husband, the tailor, was crippled and half blind, and sat at the sewing machine. They welcomed us in warmly, and he asked patiently to look at my clothes.
as the tailor and i struggled to have a conversation, ayi and her friend took turns tearing at the cloth I brought to give him directions as to what to make. um, excuse me marc jacobs - karl lagerfield, do you mind giving that back to me before you rend that to shreds? Actually, I kind of expected that, and by the expression on the tailors face this was part of the process. They insisted we sit down for tea, but I had to be in xintiandi in 1 hour for ORIENTED, there was no way I was going to make it.
i left the material with him, sure I’d never see it again. what he gave back to me made me look like a mid-western housewife from a john waters movie, without buttons.
point is, ayi is way tougher than most folks i know. I thought she was insane not to take a taxi, but of course she can’t afford it. It was awkward for me to suggest we take one when she kept insisting it was so close. As I was charcoaled, she just chatted excitedly in her shrill, loud voice with me the entire time.
